And yet I participate in society, how curious.

I’m not the other person, but that’s obviously not helpful and simply makes you look immature. Either explain where you think someone’s gone wrong or leave out the “hope that helps.” Or don’t, and everyone reading is reminded of that scene from the big Lebowski

It was for the danish as a second language classroom, clearly

Why? The family shouldn’t be punished for what their dead relative did.

Anyone know how it happened that none of those killed were Iranian citizens? The citizenship laws seem pretty accepting, considering (no mention of religion or ethnicity, so it sounds like the Jewish and Baloch populations are probably citizens), so it seems like either Iran is sheltering large numbers foreign nationals or like Pakistan has incredible precision and still killed children.

Honestly, I’d love to have dinner with him. I think he has the same failings as other popes regarding the most important problem with the church (imo, even the failing attendance is probably related to the fact that priests have been molesting children for centuries with impunity) and he fucked up Zika, badly, but in the other areas he’s great.

Also, the paragraph that starts: “in response” directly follows these two sentences. Without them, I interpreted the bumper stickers as a way for people to reject the watermelon as symbolism.

A year ago, Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir banned Palestinian flags in public places. This effort was met with fervent opposition.

That’s terrifying as an immigrant though, that 77% of the citizens around me wish I weren’t here. I don’t see how it would take too much in that case for the laws to change surrounding immigration to change drastically.

I’m not trying to sound ungrateful, but I also don’t see my presence as a burden. I don’t know why the majority of Germans disagree.

That’s what I thought until this year. I saw a different survey around the election that I’m looking for, but only 27% of Germans think that Germany is stronger because of immigration.

Thanks. You’re good! I actually realized during this exchange that the disconnect is probably because you grew up in a functional country that didn’t tell you you had rights, while showing you that you didn’t.

I’m currently entitled to residency, but the AfD got more votes than the left did where I live. Even SPD is getting shitty about immigrants. I’m not certain that it will actually go through before the government changes and I have to jump through different hoops to get it.

I’d love to have your trust, but I’ve been an immigrant for years and married for months, so I dealt with the ausländeramt alone for much of that time and I’ve seen how much they fuck up (again, they’re overworked, it’s the city’s fault). If in five years I’m still in Germany with no significant issues (and my students’ stories get a lot more hopeful), I’ll start to believe that permanent means permanent.

Yeah, exactly. I love Germany, but I don’t think it loves me back.

I’m not sure how you intended your first line, but it bristles a bit. Especially given that my comment started off explaining that Germans tend to dismiss the difficulties of immigration.

Things are very different city to city (as your wife is probably aware if she has any immigrants as friends), and the differences aren’t what you’d think. I have a couple of Arab friends in Halle, who get two year visas in the middle of their studies that basically get rubber stamp approved. Köln, on the other hand can be awful in terms of bureaucracy. I’m in a big college town, so a lot of international students live here and the office is totally overloaded (the university is not new, they should have hired more people in the fifties and kept up with immigration), but unlike Berlin, they are less likely to grant you residence because of that.

I’m still waiting on permanent residence, ideally it will be easier after that. I have to visit or call the Ausländeramt multiple times to make sure that they actually process my renewals (which they do for only a semester at a time because of Uni), including reassembling documents (bank statements, insurance, school status) for them every six months. They can’t give me permanent residence yet, because they fucked up the paperwork on our marriage license, listing me incorrectly, so they have to reprocess things. I assume they’ll forget until I remind them again at least twice, and then there will be at least one more fuckup before things get pushed through.

I love being an immigrant in Germany. I’m white and not Ukrainian though, so my experience is mostly Germans telling me that this would never apply to me, then spending on average two hours a month to stay legal here, even though I’m fluent in German, pursuing a master’s degree in German language education, and married to a German. It’s honestly not a lot of time, but it’s constant. Then, if I ever fuck up, I get deported.

That’s the benefit of English- it’s not Latin and can ignore Latin-derived grammar rules